For Kennedy, the compromise can be, should be, at the level of policy, not principle. “We can compromise our political positions,” he writes, “but not ourselves. We can resolve the clash of interests without conceding our ideals.” Idealists and reformers and dissenters in fact are crucial, because they prevent political situations from being about nothing but opportunism and expediency and careerism. Above all, “compromise need not mean cowardice. Indeed it is frequently the compromisers and conciliators who are faced with the severest tests of political courage as they oppose the extremist views of their constituents,” as their loyalty to the nation triumphs “over all personal and political considerations.”63
Not all of the eight men profiled in the remainder of the book were “compromisers and conciliators”; some were unyielding in their commitment to absolute principles. Nor, Kennedy informed his readers, did he agree with each historical stand. But all eight men had one thing in common, he insisted: they showed courage, in transcending narrow interests for what they saw as the greater good, in making the Senate “something more than a mere collection of robots dutifully recording the views of their constituents, or a gathering of time-servers skilled only in predicting and following the tides of public sentiment.”64
Thus did John Quincy Adams ignore the narrow interests of Massachusetts and New England to support the Louisiana Purchase and the Embargo Act; and thus did Daniel Webster, also from Kennedy’s home state, defy his constituents and his party in trumpeting nationalism over sectionalism in helping to broker the Compromise of 1850. Thomas Hart Benton, for his part, prevented Missouri from joining the seceding Southern states, while Sam Houston cast the lone vote among Southern Democrats against the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Edmund Ross of Kansas joined with six other Republicans to oppose the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and Mississippi’s Lucius Lamar sought, in the wake of Reconstruction, to encourage national unity over sectional strife. George Norris won acclaim for standing against the despotic rule of House Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois, and Robert Taft, recently deceased, was commended for daring to oppose the Nuremberg Trials because of his belief that the U.S. Constitution prohibited ex post facto laws. Not selected for inclusion, Kennedy noted, were those legislators whose battles, however determined and impressive, were waged “with the knowledge that they enjoyed the support of the voters back home.”65
The concluding chapter returns to the broader themes; it matters to us today for what it says about Kennedy’s views on politics and leadership, and for serving as a kind of timeless antidote to the cynicism about politics and politicians that periodically courses through the American body politic. Representative democracy is hard work, he tells his readers, for unlike in an authoritarian system, leaders in a democracy cannot impose their will on society. “We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.” Kennedy extols both compromise and courage (the courage he most favors tends to be that of moderates who resist extremists) and argues that it is on national issues—on matters of conscience that challenge party, regional, and constituent loyalties—“that the test of courage is presented.” At the same time, Kennedy says his book is not intended to laud independence for the sake of independence, or to imply that there is on every policy issue a right side and a wrong side. “On the contrary,” he writes, “I share the feelings expressed by Prime Minister Melbourne, who, when irritated by the criticism of the then youthful historian T. B. Macaulay, remarked that he would like to be as sure of anything as Macaulay seemed to be of everything.”66
Kennedy then quotes Lincoln: “There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of Government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”67
Here the senator may have been influenced by an extended conversation he had at about this time with longtime friend David Ormsby-Gore. From his reading of American history, Kennedy told the Englishman, he had drawn the lessons that there were usually two sides to every serious political problem. The zealots of the left and right, in their constant demand for simple solutions, didn’t grasp this fundamental point. “Now this didn’t prevent him being capable of taking decisions,” Ormsby-Gore said later of the conversation, “but it did always prevent him saying, ‘I know that I have got nothing but right on my side and the other side is entirely wrong,’ and he never would adopt that attitude. He said that one of the sad things in life, particularly if you were a politician, was that you discovered that the other side really had a very good case. He was most unpartisan in that way.” According to Ormsby-Gore, Kennedy even wondered whether “he was really cut out to be a politician because he was so often impressed by the other side’s arguments when he really examined them in detail. Of course, he thought nothing of them if they were just the usual sort of partisan speech attacking his position on something, but where he thought there was a valid case against his position, he was always rather impressed by the arguments advanced.”
“He knew that if you were President of the United States or indeed had any position in public life, for good or evil, somebody had to make decisions and you had the responsibility of making decisions,” Ormsby-Gore continued. “You did your best but you would be foolish to assume that you were omnipotent and all-seeing or that you were necessarily always right. The best you could hope for was that you were likely to be right more often than somebody else. It shows a considerable degree of humility in the conduct of human affairs. He felt that people who thought it was simple and that the answers were obvious were dangerous people.”68
In July 1955, with the manuscript almost complete, Jack asked his sister Eunice and others for input on the title. He told them he had four possibilities in mind: “Men of Courage,” “Eight Were Courageous,” “Call the Roll,” and “Profiles of Courage.” Responses varied, and Kennedy himself soon dropped “Men of Courage” from consideration. Other options considered and rejected included “The Patriots” and “Courage in the Senate.” Ultimately, Evan Thomas and his colleagues at the publishing house made the call: it would be Profiles in Courage.69
That summer, Kennedy and Sorensen worked to incorporate suggestions from a range of academics, notably James MacGregor Burns, Arthur Holcombe (who had taught Kennedy at Harvard), Allan Nevins (who would also contribute a foreword), and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who submitted four pages of single-spaced criticism in early July. (Kennedy had asked Schlesinger to be “ruthlessly frank in giving me your criticism, comments and suggestions, however major or however petty,” and the historian obliged, calling the Webster chapter problematic and the Taft chapter wholly unpersuasive. “If statesmanship implies a capacity to see the real issues,” he wrote with respect to the former, “then the architects of the Compromise [of 1850] were far from statesmen. Webster never saw either the political issue of Southern domination of the Union or the moral issue of slavery.” As for Taft, his condemnation of the Nuremberg Trials, however defensible, took place outside the Senate, and moreover it was “hard to recollect Taft’s doing anything else which required political courage.” Kennedy tweaked both chapters in response, though not to Schlesinger’s full satisfaction.) In early August, Kennedy informed Thomas that Sorensen would submit the finished version shortly, as soon as he received some final input from Nevins.70
Sorensen would do the honors because by then Kennedy had decamped for a vacation in the South of France. Over the preceding months, his health had gradually improved. On March 1 he walked without crutches for the first time, and the next day he ventured to the beach, with Jackie and Dave Powers steadying him. There would be setbacks in the weeks thereafter, with long stints in bed, but the trend lines pointed in the right direction. He gained weight and grew steadily stronger. On May 23, 1955, after seven months away, he returned triumphantly to Washington. Family and friends were out in force at National Airport to greet his flight from Palm Beach, which also included Jackie and sister Jean. Later, on the Capitol steps, he posed for newsreel and TV cameramen, to the cheers of tourists and a delegation of southern textile workers who happened by. Inside the Senate Office Building, receptionists stood to applaud when the senator entered room 362, and he found his inner office crammed with waiting reporters. On his desk, among the letters and telegrams celebrating his return, was a giant fruit basket bearing a note that read “Welcome home,” signed “Dick Nixon.”71
One of the reporters asked about his upcoming thirty-eighth birthday. “I’m looking forward to it,” he replied with a chuckle. “I’ll certainly be glad to get out of my thirty-seventh year.”
Would Ike run again?
“I don’t know.”
Wasn’t the president’s strength as formidable everywhere as it had been when he entered the White House?
“Well, I’ve been in a pretty limited area. I’ll say that he seems to be standing up well in Palm Beach.” Laughter all around.72
If Jackie hoped her husband would proceed with care, easing gently back into his routines, she was soon disappointed. At his direction, his staff arranged an ambitious schedule, starting with a commencement address at Assumption College, in Worcester, on June 3, followed by another graduation address at Boston College on June 5 and the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on June 9. On the sixteenth he attended the fifteenth reunion of his Harvard class.73
The big early event, though, occurred on June 10, when Kennedy hosted a picnic in Hyannis Port for close to three hundred state legislators and legislative assistants, including “secretaries” from the 1952 campaign but also many who had never been active for him. He greeted them in chinos, sweatshirt, and sneakers, looking youthful and energetic. It was a transparent attempt to show Massachusetts Democrats that he was back and healthier than ever, and it worked. “The thing I remember most about the event was that he was physically able to move around,” Kenny O’Donnell remembered. “There were no crutches. They had softball games and so forth, and it was an excellent outing.” Most important, to O’Donnell’s mind, the senator’s appeal to the rank and file hadn’t dissipated one iota.
Jack Kennedy’s magic was as solid as it ever had been. He was on his feet. He was healthy again, physically and mentally. The great attraction of the candidate was on display, and the fear that he might not return, that siding with Jack Kennedy was a risk, was finally put to rest. To many of these regular politicians who had eyed Jack with suspicion as an outsider, a rich kid, and a lightweight now saw something else. They saw their political future and the future of the party in Massachusetts. They knew now it was better to be on the winning side, and for the regulars that meant siding with Jack Kennedy.74
He was not, however, the same man. Close associates such as O’Donnell and Powers and Sorensen noticed that his long health ordeal had changed him, had made him more serious, more determined. Having long believed that he would not live past the age of forty-five, he felt enhanced pressure to achieve the goal, stated to his wife, of claiming his “place in history.” Said journalist Joseph Alsop some years later, “I’ve always thought he did not begin to take his own career truly seriously, I mean to have any long range and high aim in his own career, until he went through his very serious illness in 1955….Something very important happened inside him, I think, when he had that illness because he came out of it a very much more serious fellow than he was prior to it. He had gone through the valley of the shadow of death, and he had displayed immense courage, which he’d always had.”75
This isn’t quite right: Kennedy’s “long range and high aim” was evident well before the middle of 1955—indeed, arguably from the first House race in 1946. But the depiction of a more serious, more focused political figure coming out of the harrowing surgery and aftermath rings true, as does the suggestion that Kennedy emerged from the tribulations with his reputation for physical courage further enhanced. In this way the episode actually boosted his public profile. Newspaper and magazine editors found the story irresistible, and the fact that Kennedy’s misadventure came so soon after his high-profile society wedding made it all the more poignant. Photos of the senator entering the hospital, on crutches, while his devoted Jackie smiles bravely at his side played widely across the country, shaping the narrative of the handsome lawmaker and war hero who refused to give in to his ailments and ultimately vanquished them.76
To those who knew him well, the turnaround was stunning: eight months after almost dying in a New York hospital room and four months after it seemed he might never walk unaided again, his political career in all likelihood over, John F. Kennedy was back, by no means fully healthy but so much better than he had been, and on the cusp of becoming what he had not been up until now: a figure of national renown.